Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Tuesday that he will introduce a bill in the remainder of 2024 to limiting minors’ access to social networks and other digital platforms, in order to mitigate the mental health problems of children and adolescents.
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Although the minimum age to access social networks has not yet been determined, it is expected that It will be between 14 and 16 years old, as Albanese said in an interview with Australian public broadcaster ABC on Tuesday.
“We are evaluating how to do it”said Albanese, whose government is awaiting the completion of a multi-million-dollar age verification technology pilot plan to protect children and teenagers from harmful comments, which was announced last May.
The aim is to protect the mental health of young people
“Safety and mental health and “The physical development of our young people is paramount,” said the Labour leader, adding that “no generation had ever faced this challenge before,” which will affect networks such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Albanese’s plan will also build on a proposal from the South Australian state government, announced earlier this week, which seeks force companies that manage social networks to prohibit access to children under 14 years of age under penalty of a fine, among other measures.
The study that supported the South Australian proposal cited medical experts who warned of problems of bullying, aggression, self-esteem and sexualisation, among others, among teenagers, who spent an average of 3.3 hours a day on social networks, as reported by the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday.
With its plan, Australia is echoing global concerns that led Spain to set the minimum age for accessing a social network at 14, although it is planned to raise it to 16, in the face of risks to privacy, coercion, threats and computer scams.
Likewise, Puerto Rico decreed last July that 18 years old is the minimum age for a person to be able to activate an account on any social network, a measure that is similar to that of Texas (United States), while in the US state of Florida the minimum age is 14.
In New York, two laws were passed: one to require parental consent for minors under 18 to use “addictive threads”” based on recommendation algorithms, as well as another to limit the collection of data from minors.
EFE
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